One Find Of The Utmost Importance Was Made At Komatipoort, And At
Hector Spruit On The Crocodile River.
That excellent artillery
which had fought so gallant a fight against our own more numerous
guns, was found destroyed and abandoned.
Pole-Carew at Komatipoort
got one Long Tom (96-pound) Creusot, and one smaller gun. Ian
Hamilton at Hector Spruit found the remains of many guns, which
included two of our horse artillery twelve-pounders, two large
Creusot guns, two Krupps, one Vickers-Maxim quick firer, two
pompoms and four mountain guns.
CHAPTER 30.
THE CAMPAIGN OF DE WET.
It had been hoped that the dispersal of the main Boer army, the
capture of its guns and the expulsion of many both of the burghers
and of the foreign mercenaries, would have marked the end of the
war. These expectations were, however, disappointed, and South
Africa was destined to be afflicted and the British Empire
disturbed by a useless guerilla campaign. After the great and
dramatic events which characterised the earlier phases of the
struggle between the Briton and the Boer for the mastery of South
Africa it is somewhat of the nature of an anticlimax to turn one's
attention to those scattered operations which prolonged the
resistance for a turbulent year at the expense of the lives of many
brave men on either side. These raids and skirmishes, which had
their origin rather in the hope of vengeance than of victory,
inflicted much loss and misery upon the country, but, although we
may deplore the desperate resolution which bids brave men prefer
death to subjugation, it is not for us, the countrymen of Hereward
or Wallace, to condemn it.
In one important respect these numerous, though trivial, conflicts
differed from the battles in the earlier stages of the war. The
British had learned their lesson so thoroughly that they often
turned the tables upon their instructors. Again and again the
surprise was effected, not by the nation of hunters, but by those
rooineks whose want of cunning and of veld-craft had for so long
been a subject of derision and merriment. A year of the kopje and
the donga had altered all that. And in the proportion of casualties
another very marked change had occurred. Time was when in battle
after battle a tenth would have been a liberal estimate for the
losses of the Boers compared with those of the Briton. So it was at
Stormberg; so it was at Colenso; so it may have been at
Magersfontein. But in this last stage of the war the balance was
rather in favour of the British. It may have been because they were
now frequently acting on the defensive, or it may have been from an
improvement in their fire, or it may have come from the more
desperate mood of the burghers, but in any case the fact remains
that every encounter diminished the small reserves of the Boers
rather than the ample forces of their opponents.
One other change had come over the war, which caused more distress
and searchings of conscience among some of the people of Great
Britain than the darkest hours of their misfortunes. This lay in
the increased bitterness of the struggle, and in those more
strenuous measures which the British commanders felt themselves
entitled and compelled to adopt. Nothing could exceed the lenity of
Lord Roberts's early proclamations in the Free State. But, as the
months went on and the struggle still continued, the war assumed a
harsher aspect. Every farmhouse represented a possible fort, and a
probable depot for the enemy. The extreme measure of burning them
down was only carried out after a definite offence, such as
affording cover for snipers, or as a deterrent to railway wreckers,
but in either case it is evident that the women or children who
were usually the sole occupants of the farm could not by their own
unaided exertions prevent the line from being cut or the riflemen
from firing. It is even probable that the Boers may have committed
these deeds in the vicinity of houses the destruction of which they
would least regret. Thus, on humanitarian grounds there were strong
arguments against this policy of destruction being pushed too far,
and the political reasons were even stronger, since a homeless man
is necessarily the last man to settle down, and a burned-out family
the last to become contented British citizens. On the other hand,
the impatience of the army towards what they regarded as the abuses
of lenity was very great, and they argued that the war would be
endless if the women in the farm were allowed always to supply the
sniper on the kopje. The irregular and brigand-like fashion in
which the struggle was carried out had exasperated the soldiers,
and though there were few cases of individual outrage or
unauthorised destruction, the general orders were applied with some
harshness, and repressive measures were taken which warfare may
justify but which civilisation must deplore.
After the dispersal of the main army at Komatipoort there remained
a considerable number of men in arms, some of them irreconcilable
burghers, some of them foreign adventurers, and some of them Cape
rebels, to whom British arms were less terrible than British law.
These men, who were still well armed and well mounted, spread
themselves over the country, and acted with such energy that they
gave the impression of a large force. They made their way into the
settled districts, and brought fresh hope and fresh disaster to
many who had imagined that the war had passed for ever away from
them. Under compulsion from their irreconcilable countrymen, a
large number of the farmers broke their parole, mounted the horses
which British leniency had left with them, and threw themselves
once more into the struggle, adding their honour to the other
sacrifices which they had made for their country. In any account of
the continual brushes between these scattered bands and the British
forces, there must be such a similarity in procedure and result,
that it would be hard for the writer and intolerable for the reader
if they were set forth in detail.
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